Posts Tagged ‘NCAA’

World Cup: un-American (Morning). Or, at least, un-Christine. In the first hour of the show, American Morning co-anchor Kiran Chetry declared that the World Cup was the “biggest sporting event in the world…although it might not seem like it here in the U.S.” Subsequently, CNN correspondent and now three-time World Cup attendee Pedro Pinto asserted that he had “never seen anything like” the festivities attendant to Africa’s first World Cup held in Johannesburg, South Africa. Nevertheless, like many Americans, AM‘s biz babe Christine Romans did not seem impressed.

Later, Christine discussed the adverse effect of the “world’s most popular sport” on productivity in the United States. After stressing that soccer (or non-American “football”) was the fourth worst offender after the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, NFL Fantasy football, and the Super Bowl (Monday thereafter), she showed AM co-host Kiran Chetry a voluminous bankers’ analysis of who would win the World Cup. When Kiran asked why bankers were so interested, Christine responded, “Because there’s nothing more global than banking and the people who work at these banks [have] usually worked at a lot of different places around the world: They are golf, uh…no, they are World Cup nuts.”

Trying to give her colleague Christine some cover, Kiran kindly nodded her head and offered, “They’re golfers, too.” However, after Christine’s story had run, her producer was somewhat less sweet. Christine Tweeted, “and there i am on air with @kiranchetry cnn talking world cup and i accidentally call it “golf”. my producer razzing me mercilessly!!”

Golf vis-a-vis soccer? As the author replied to Christine, at least, she lives in the United States where many may have not noticed. However, had she lived in Brazil, she may not have returned to work the next business day. Vive la difference!

Are Fox & Friends co-hosts Dave Briggs and Brian Kilmeade stereotypical dumb jocks? If not, viewers can be forgiven for thinking so this week. Today, it was Dave’s banner: Thursday, it was Brian’s chyron and copy (hopefully).

Today, Dave Briggs reported that thirty-two NCAA teams had advanced to the second round in the playoffs: regrettably, his chyron repeatedly read “More March Madness! 33 Teams Eliminated, 32 Win and Move on.” Obviously, in the NCAA’s 32-game first round, of the 64 teams in contention, 1/2 (32) of the teams lost and were eliminated and the other 1/2 (32) won and progressed to the next round.

Perhaps, today Dave was simply inattentive to the math: However, Thursday Brian’s subtraction problem was even worse. During a headline story, he razzed Arizona State for its improper grammar on a billboard which omitted the article “the.” (The sign was emblazoned with the laudatory phrase, “One of top 100 universities in the world.”) Unfortunately, Brian threw yet another stone as he teased guest host Juliet Huddy for not noticing the error. Then, in the very next story that he read, he made his math mistake: he said that West Point was founded in 1802 and that it was celebrating its 210th anniversary. Patently, it was its 208th. (Viz., 2010-1802 = 208.)

Perhaps, it’s time to pull out the abaci, fellows. Or, at least, get new batteries for the calculators.